World War II - The Third ReichLEADING TO WAR | THE ALLIES | THE AXIS | MAJOR BATTLES | THE HOLOCAUST | LITTLE BOY & FAT MAN The Holocaust
The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.
During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehova's Witnesses, and homosexuals.
A synagogue burns during Kristallnacht.
A Jewish neighborhood after the Night of Broken Glass.
Herschel Grynszpan, on November 7, 1938, decided to kill the German ambassador after he found out his father had been sent to a "relocation camp". After finding that the ambassador wasn't there, he settled for a lower officer, Third Secretary Ernst von Rath. Ernst died two days later. Goebbels used this to generate anti-Semitic propaganda, used to such extent to create riots against the Jewish population. On November 9-10, Kristallnacht, bands of Nazis roamed through Jewish neighborhoods, breaking windows, burning synagogues, and looting. The Fuhrer reportedly "decided that such demonstrations are not to be prepared or organized by the party, but so far as they originate spontaneously, they are not to be discouraged either."
On October 23, 1941, SS Head Heinrich Himmler issued an order down the chain of command to end their strategies towards Jews. They were to no longer try to get Jews to emigrate, but deport them to ghettos and concentration camps. On December 8, 1941, the first gassing of Jews took place in Chelmno, Poland. The Nazis, though benefiting from Jewish slave labor, had decided elimination was more important then the value of their labor. Nazi death camps started showing up all over German-controlled lands, where nearly 7 million Jews died.
"We heard a loud voice repeating the same words in English and in German: 'Hello, hello. You are free. We are British soldiers and have come to liberate you.' These words still resound in my ears."
---Hadassah Rosensaft, inmate of Bergen-Belsen.
"Dr. Mengele had always been more interested in Tibi. I am not sure why - perhaps because he was the older twin. Mengele made several operations on Tibi. One surgery on his spine left my brother paralyzed. He could not walk anymore. Then they took out his sexual organs. After the fourth operation, I did not see Tibi anymore. I cannot tell you how I felt. It is impossible to put into words how I felt. They had taken away my father, my mother, my two older brothers - and now, my twin ..."
---A "Child of Auschwitz"
The Holocaust
The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.
During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehova's Witnesses, and homosexuals.
On October 23, 1941, SS Head Heinrich Himmler issued an order down the chain of command to end their strategies towards Jews. They were to no longer try to get Jews to emigrate, but deport them to ghettos and concentration camps. On December 8, 1941, the first gassing of Jews took place in Chelmno, Poland. The Nazis, though benefiting from Jewish slave labor, had decided elimination was more important then the value of their labor. Nazi death camps started showing up all over German-controlled lands, where nearly 7 million Jews died.
"We heard a loud voice repeating the same words in English and in German: 'Hello, hello. You are free. We are British soldiers and have come to liberate you.' These words still resound in my ears."
---Hadassah Rosensaft, inmate of Bergen-Belsen.
"Dr. Mengele had always been more interested in Tibi. I am not sure why - perhaps because he was the older twin. Mengele made several operations on Tibi. One surgery on his spine left my brother paralyzed. He could not walk anymore. Then they took out his sexual organs. After the fourth operation, I did not see Tibi anymore. I cannot tell you how I felt. It is impossible to put into words how I felt. They had taken away my father, my mother, my two older brothers - and now, my twin ..."
---A "Child of Auschwitz"